Brokers in Austin, Texas, will soon regain the option to send their listings to Trulia through their multiple listing service.
The Austin Board of Realtors — which stopped syndicating listings on its brokers’ behalf through ListHub on Wednesday after citing concerns about unethical business practices and inaccurate listing data on consumer websites not affiliated with a Realtor trade group — will begin providing Trulia an opt-in data feed on May 7 as a member of Trulia’s “Data Connect” program.
Inaccurate data on consumer sites sets “false expectations for consumers that inhibit their ability to make sound real estate decisions” and “damage(s) the reputation of Realtors” when consumers rely on the inaccurate data and believe their Realtor to be misinformed, ABoR said when it announced its decision to stop syndicating its members’ listings to third-party sites in October.
“By leveraging ABoR’s data quality standards, this partnership with a top listing advertising portal will bring the broad exposure that home sellers desire and protect against homebuyer frustrations from poor data quality,” said Lisa Messana, chair of ABoR’s MLS advisory committee, in a statement.
Over the last few months, ABoR developed the data quality standards that it would require Trulia and other “Realtor-friendly” portals to agree to before syndicating listings on its brokers’ behalf to them again, Messana told Inman News.
“We have strengthened the terms under which third-party websites can use and display our members’ data, and Trulia has stepped up to meet these data integrity standards,” Messana said.
Trulia addressed the accuracy and ethical concerns ABoR had by:
- Agreeing to display the listing agent and broker branding and contact information.
- Providing a link to the listing broker, agent or the MLS website property detail page.
- Removing duplicate and off-market listings in a timely manner.
- Maintaining a means to receive user feedback about the accuracy of information displayed.
- Not syndicating listings to other websites without the broker’s consent.
ABoR, which has 9,000 members, is the third large MLS to join Trulia Data Connect this year. My Florida Regional MLS, which serves over 33,000 subscribers in central and southwest Florida, and Arizona Regional MLS, which serves approximately 30,000 members, joined in April and March, respectively.
In the Data Connect program, brokers’ listings are refreshed as frequently as every eight minutes with the direct MLS feeds. When relayed through other platforms, like listing syndication services ListHub and Point2, listings on Trulia take from six to 12 hours to refresh, Trulia spokesman Matt Flegal said.
In addition, participating brokers’ agents get increased branding on the portal, in lead emails to consumers and in Trulia’s agent directory.
Brokers can also send Trulia listings directly through the Trulia Broker Program. However, the ability to send listings to Trulia through an MLS is helpful to smaller brokerages that may lack the tech infrastructure to syndicate their feeds to the portal themselves, Flegal said.